This makes the ascendancy of the dark side over the course of the prequels all the more believable and tragic.

When seeing the Jedi as fallen and the Senate as corrupt, the audience is meant to be shocked and, through this, realize how broken the galaxy is. It presents the Jedi as fallen, not the great warriors that Obi-Wan spoke of in A New Hope, it focuses on the politics of the galaxy, rather than swashbuckling adventure, and it makes the protagonist a child, not a teenager on the cusp of adulthood.īut these decisions are among the best in the Saga because by depicting the galaxy as not what we expected, George Lucas highlights to the audience the corruption which pervades it at this point in galactic history. The movie subverts audience expectations in so far as it is wholly different from what came before, which is why it received such a backlash from those who had grown up with the originals. Since its release, The Phantom Menace has been the subject of great controversy that can ultimately be put down to its subversive nature, but this is actually one of its great strengths.

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